The Fry Sight Words list is a more modern list of words than the Dolch list, and was extended to capture the most common 1,000 words. Dr. Edward Fry developed this expanded list in the 1950s (and updated it in 1980), based on the most common words to appear in reading materials used in Grades 3-9. Learning all 1,000 words in the Fry list would equip a child to read about 90% of the words in a typical book, newspaper, or website.

The Fry words are listed by the frequency with which they occur and are often broken down into groups of 100. So the first 100 Fry words are the 100 most frequently occurring words in the English language.

14 Responses to “Fry Sight Words List”

Margaret Landry

I am volunteering with children whose primary language at home is not English. We are using the sight words but also would like to work with helping them make sentences with these words. Do you have any handouts which would help? Thank you, Margaret

Pioria Asito

Thank you so much for these resources. My 10 yr. old twins (Jalen and Jaden) are now able to recognize simple words and read them. With continuing practices every evening, I hope to introduce them to more words. Again, thank you!!

Michelle Johnson

Joanna b.

I am a retired teacher, I do Sub for a few schools in my District. I used these list in a PowerPoint, set on a timer. My students like to see who could learn the most words. So they could go onto the next 100 words. I had EEL students in my room each year.
I also had other students help the EEL students. They became Peer Teachers, they loved the idea they could teach others.
Now I’m beginning to utilize for my 2 yr old grandson, a few minutes each day.

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